A general soft ionization method for mass spectrometry: Resonance‐enhanced multi‐photon ionization of biomolecules

Abstract

Abstract We show here that ‘double‐barrelled’ laser desorption/resonance‐enhanced multi‐photon ionization mass spectrometry has many advantages over traditional single‐step desorption/ionization techniques, particularly if combined with Reflectron‐Time‐of‐Flight mass analysers. We demonstrate the effectiveness of this technique for large labile biomolecules, namely native chlorophylls, porphyrins and a peptide, as examples of structural and mass analysis.